J. B. Sollberger

A TRIBUTE TO SOLLY

EDITOR'S NOTE: Upon receiving a congratulatory letter from J. B. Sollberger pertaining to the STAA in general and a few names in particular I sent copies to those mentioned. The response from T. C. Hill MUST be shared:

"The Sollberger letter brought back fond old memories. Stricken with misfortunes of almost biblical magnitude, ol' Solly STILL found use for his two hands, besides earning awards for flintknapping and flaking.. he took a moment to APPLAUD his old buddies .. that's pretty rare in my book, but it's just simply ol' Solly. He don't know any other way to operate.

"His address is not his OLD home address, so I'm guessing he's in some old nursing home.. hope they appreciate him.

"The photo depicts some points he made hanging on a wall in my house.. 16 of 'em! Why ME? I really don't know, but he offered them with a bashful manner, like he doubted their V ALOE.

"I saw him make the point on lower right at a ST AA meeting in San Antonio one time. He was a natural showman, could have cleaned up in vaudeville. He smashed rocks with absolutely all his force, scattering flakes all over the place. The sounds were a lot like listening to somebody smash big old plate glass windows. He laid down his cigar for a minute (after nearly drooling it to flickering DEATH in his intensity to put his points over to a crowd of idiots), snapped a flat hard stone across the edge of his preform for a couple seconds (to prepare a platform.. a 'platform? What on earth FOR, Solly? He took pains to explain the purposes of his actions to those of us who seemed half-way intelligent, a total of about 3 out of the 100 in attendance) .. We sat in breathless awe, to explode into wild applause when exactly the reaction occurred

which he predicted.. he leaned back, picked up his soggy cigar and put another match to it, laid down the big ol' tool and selected a smaller one and went on to the next step. I tell you true, it was a SHOW by a topnotch showman, and the line at the res rooms was always ZERO when Solly was performing!

We worked (worked? Ha .. me and ol' Solly never worked at anything, we PLAYED!) at producing a Region 8 Newsletter (the fmal number, actually) describing as best we two could ol' Solly knocking out a pretty good South Texas Angostura, the steps, the ancient thinking required (Solly could explain for HOURS what an OLD ONE needed to ponder to create artistic, useful BEAUTY in stone.. he had the direct LINE back to the old folks' brains, and I reckon that stirred ME about as much as his truly magnificent skill at the game.)

The point we described (as he actually made it in Dallas and mailed the sketches and descriptions, in short bursts) is the one at top right in the photo .. he had to insure that the ribbons ran from upper? to lower? to exactly reproduce the "Texas" artifact, see? You may rediscover all this exciting news in "Hill's South Texas Newsletter," (Texas Archeological Society, Special Issue No.1, September 1973). I recall that we had to go into a small reprint to satisfy all the calls and cards asking for a copy, which was satisfactory to the both of us. I never told ol' Solly that I have, to this day, never seen the paper used in any manner as a reference unless maybe ol' Hester stooped to use us, as he sometimes WOULD, but we had OUR fun out of it, anyhow!

At the time, I was fmding some diamond-shaped, alternately beveled skinning knives, or whatever they call 'em nowadays, fmally fashioned by resharpening a blank similar to the tool on far right of the photo, around these pottery sites which I deduced to have been created (the knives AND sites) by northern people who followed the big ol' bison down here in prehistoric times, maybe running over slightly into historic.. ol' Solly MADE me the 'before and after' artifacts to display what a dental-flake-job might resemble on the thing, the used tool at far left.

Is this guy REAL, or what?

The others were mostly S. Texas. styles, some Plainviews both heat-treated and not, a couple of Golondrinas because I had taken the stump to declare that there WAS no such cat as a Plainview golondrina, as was popular at the time. (ol' Tom Campbell bailed me out on that argument, bless his ol' heart .. I was just shooting in the dark, but with some hope of victory.)

So I better prepare a letter for ol' Solly.. I'm delighted that some of his friends are taking their time to visit and read to him. If I thought he could still afford one 0' them gigantic Cuban stogies and still had the energy to smoke one down through the drool, I might find some and mail 'em to him.. Boy, he could squint through that dank fog, take deliberate aim and SMASH a rock all to PIECES.

TC

THE LOSS OF LEGENDS

In the span of just two weeks, archaeology lost two important figures, J. B. Sollberger and Thomas C. Kelly. Mr. Sollberger died on May 7 in Dallas, and Col. Kelly, May 21 in San Antonio. Obituaries will appear in later issues of this, and other, journals.

Sollberger had achieved an international reputation as an experimental flintknapper, but was also an active avocational archaeologist, recognized with the Crabtree Award by the Society for American Archaeology. His demonstrations of flintknapping dexterity and his careful study of tool manufacture and function were well known to STAA members.

Kelly made important contributions to Texas archaeology, through papers in the Bulletin of the Texas Archeological Society, while he was on active duty in the U.S. Air Force. He later worked as a professional archaeologist at, and received his MA from, The University of Texas at San Antonio. He was a stalwart of the STAA, but was also widely known, on an international basis, for his studies of Paleoindian typology and his sustained fieldwork in Belize.

Both men were legends in their archaeological work, their personalities, and the influence they exerted. Their passing is indeed a loss to us all.

Thomas R. Hester